


Make Me

by Chaerring



Series: This Is His Love, This is Her Body [5]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, F/M, Female Character of Color, Female Q, Female-Centric, Gen, Genderqueer Character, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 18:50:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2319725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/Chaerring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eve Moneypenny's life is an exercise in denial of definition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd. 
> 
> The poetry is from Lord Alfred Tennyson's "Ulysses" and the title is a reference to Florence and the Machine's "Bedroom Hymns". The full phrases are "This is as good a place to fall as any / We'll build our altar here / Make me your Maria / I'm already on my knees".

Eve Moneypenny’s life is an exercise in denial of definition. Orphans make the best recruits, but her mother routinely proves her life with hundreds of successful oral surgeries a year, and a every few years her father publishes a new academic paper on the nature of race in literature and the reflection of life between the written word. She grew up watching their minds continue to flourish as their bodies relaxed into not unhealthy forms, but certainly cushioned and complacent ones. She can thank her mother for her pearly whites and excellent dental habits, and she can thank her father for a practiced process of critical thinking that saves her life more than once, but she will never thank them for the expectation that she also spend her life in offices and chairs with a doctorate on the wall. 

She joins the Royal Navy at nineteen, just two years after the WRENS had been incorporated into the Royal Navy and just four after the Gulf War’s deployment of women in combat situations. England has a larger history of women in combat, of course, but that doesn’t change the way she has no opportunity to join the Royal Marines or how hard she has to work to gain ranks. Eventually, she’s Lieutenant Moneypenny, but it’s not enough. She’s barred from taking the fight directly to the enemy by nature of her position and the institution of gender lain over the sex of her body. Her parents are relieved when she sees them on leave, but she’s merely stuck and frustrated, refusing to accept this as her life. 

Her first brush with MI6 comes in the form of Agent Justin Olsen who requests transport from the ship she serves on after his first successful mission as 004. He’s charming, but not charming enough to make her forget her duties. Instead of the kind of encounter he was angling for, she gets a promise of a name drop out of him and it’s enough. Within a year her service had been transferred and she enters a very different world. It’s thrilling, though, and nothing about her sex or gender holds her back. In some cases, she’s even more of an asset for it. The image of her father frowns in her mind sometimes about the exploitation of her body and her race, but she’s as efficient as she can possibly be with every bit of herself and her ability. Her life and her service is her own behind a desk filling out post mission reports, or in the field itself, finally able to take the fight to the Crown’s enemies and use her skills. 

The are no barriers for promotion besides how well she can take orders and how well she can carry them out. Eve is very good at both, so it’s only three years before she’s moved from general field work to the more elite teams. She doesn’t know what her end goal is, how far she wants to take herself-- into the 00 programme, into handling teams? The options are unlimited. It’s after this promotion and change in teams that she begins to meet 00 agents and Q branch operatives with creative weapons modifications and gizmos that save her life. 

She didn’t even notice at first, which in hindsight was rather unobservant of her, or perhaps simply a credit to the 00 and Quartermaster divisions that they were able to pass so unobtrusively under her moderately experienced eye. The 00s seem just like any other agent until she starts talking to them. Their charm makes her metaphorical hackles rise, even as she’s drawn in. They’re all beautiful, all like venus flytraps. It’s the technicians, though, that she doesn’t notice at all.

There’s one in particular that she often sees to collect and return her kit. A young man with curling dark hair, a slight favoring of one leg, and a soft no-nonsense voice that Eve can’t help but take an immediate liking to. She often finds herself sharing tea or lunch with him when she’s between missions. It’s a quiet slow-building friendship that Eve thinks she must have fucked up from the beginning when she one day hears Boothyrood himself asking K where _she_ left their current project rather than where _he_ left it. Tentatively and apologetically Eve switches the pronouns she uses to refer to K, who seems more amused than offended or anything else. The relationship doesn’t change one bit, and Eve is more relieved than she ought to be.

Two years later she takes a dirty shot on an order she doesn’t want to follow in Istanbul and thinks she’s done the impossible-- removed James Bond from Her Majesty’s Service. Not even twenty-four hours later she’s handing her gun over to K. They’ve already suspended her unofficially, but it will be a few days before she finds out how ruined her career is by the death of an unkillable man. Before she can stop herself there’s an invitation hanging in the air between them for after work drinks. 

One of the consequences of their careers and Eve’s own drive is her lack of friends. There is no support outside of the life support of MI6 for agents of their security clearance. The invitation is out there, and she can’t take it back. She can only watch the cogs of K’s brain turn through her glasses and eyes, waiting for the verdict. She is surprised she gets a positive answer. It’s less of a surprise that neither one of them talk about Eve’s mission or even the rumors Eve has slowly gathered over the years about K’s slightly off gait or why she doesn’t do field work despite her age and ability. 

Eve drinks more than she should. It’s not a habit, or even a precedent she’s setting, she’ll make sure of that, but in the meantime K’s lips are red from the cold and their last round of fruity cocktails. She’s letting Eve press her into the couch and take off her sweater. Her hands crawl up K’s shirt, even drunk she can make out a surgical scar on the younger woman’s back, and less than surgical scars on her front, but it doesn’t stop her from opening up those buttons and fastening her mouth over the points of K’s nipples, almost seen through the thin unlined, but surprisingly lacey bra she wears. 

K sighs beautifully underneath her and slides one hand, not long and elegant like one imagines a programmer’s fingers, but average sized and practical with flat nails, into her hair to play gently with it. She doesn’t comment on the difference in texture or curl, just arches her back so that Eve can get rid of her clothing. She wakes with K beneath her in that exact position and a small headache. Her friend, possibly her best friend, is beautiful in sleep. She’s someone outside the ideas of relationships that Eve grew up with and Eve knows she has to get her head on straight before she can do anything about this.

MI6 blows up while she’s tending to Mallory and all the while she scrambles to move the survivors and help set up in the bunker, she _regrets, regrets, regrets_. Then M is introducing Mallory to the executive heads of branches and Q isn’t Boothroyd, because Eve just watched Tanner file Boothroyd’s funeral arrangements with too many others. Q is K, and Eve regrets just a little less her part in this fiasco. They’ve got no time for anything other than acknowledgement. Q still doesn’t have a place for her branch in the bunker and getting emotional in front of M and Mallory is not the way to get back into the field. 

James Bond comes back from the dead while Eve’s following Mallory around like his shadow and she doesn’t know what to do. She can’t avoid him forever, _won’t_ avoid him at all no matter if that’s what everyone expects. When Mallory dismisses her from the cabinet meeting and it just so happens that Tanner’s about to call Bond in for his results she volunteers to send him in to M. Tanner pauses uncertainty and then amusement flickering across his face. She doesn’t let it phase her. Tanner knows everyone better than they’d like, better than _he_ would like. It’s the Chief of Staff’s job to.

“If you want.” He concedes.

A short walk away, passing the hall to Q branch’s new area where she can hear drills working, she finds James. The perfect blues of his suit are at odds with unkempt beginnings of a beard and the exhaustion hanging over his head like a prepped noose. She won’t take all the blame, part of it’s the job, she knows, but she has to take some of it for his current state. He smiles at her, the same quick, craggy way he did when she knocked the second mirror off the jeep, and her quips fall just short of keeping up with him because she’s just on the side of too relieved to really concentrate on them. 

“It’s not for everyone, you know.” 

Anyone else who would say that to her, everyone else who had, in fact, said that to her in the past month had received a glare and a reiteration of her determination to return to field work. For all that he mockingly asks for a warning, James Bond isn’t mocking _her_. His eyes are serious, and maybe as close to concerned as he will allow himself to be for a fellow agent. He’s not telling her she _can’t_ cut it, but that she doesn’t _have_ to. It’s something she considers on the flight to Macau after Q spends ten minutes nearly shouting in her own placid way at M and Mallory when they suggest she leave her branch and see 007 use the kit she assigned him in person. 

M and Eve know it’s Q’s fear of flying just as much as her still half assembled branch that makes her refuse the order and suggest Eve instead, but Mallory doesn’t know yet. Unless the rumors are true that he’ll be taking over for M and his time as the Chairman of Security and Intelligence is merely a stop over, Mallory will never need to know. Bond is surprised to see her, but not surprised Mallory’s trying to spy on him in one way or another. Nor does he seem very surprised to find out about Q’s fear, even though Eve knows he must be drawing incorrect conclusions about their new Quartermaster.

She shaves him carefully and it’s a strange ritual of apology, trust, and seduction. He is a bit like a handsy teenage trying to sneak her blouse open before she’s done, but she can’t help be relaxed and charmed by that. She doesn’t really care what it means to him, the way he gets her off quickly, twice with his calloused fingers and freshly smoothed face, and doesn’t let her reciprocate, citing a need to dress and continue the mission. She does, however, wonder if it’s some kind of preparation for him, granting orgasms to someone he’s relatively sure he can trust before going out into the world where he decidedly can’t trust anyone.

She’s more pissed on Q’s behalf than her own when he sinks his ear bud into the untouched champagne on her table and leaves her out of the mission. She watches a Komodo Dragon eat his gun and saves that story for James to tell Q himself. It’s simple enough to watch him fight everyone rather than ruin her dress or break her cover, but when there’s a barrel on pointed at his face she has no choice except interference. Her reward is a rather large sum of pounds that she doubles for the Queen’s coffers by putting it all on black just to be contrary. 

Bond comes back with Silva satisfied in his work, but there’s something else going on between the two of them and M that Eve just doesn’t spend enough time away from Mallory to get a handle on before M’s hearing. She’s stuck in the back, behind rows and rows of suit, most whom even if they’ve served haven’t served MI6 and it’s shameful, truly embarrassing for the Minister to berate M the way she goes on. It was M’s order, but it was Eve’s shot. She knows M is shouldering the responsibility, but she can’t help feeling like she should be on trial as well.

_We are not now that strength which in old days_  
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;  
One equal temper of heroic hearts,  
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

M’s words echo in Eve’s mind even as Mallory leaps over the committee's bar and she brings herself around the side around the side of the room to attempt and gather the other members. 007 unhesitatingly kicks a gun into her hands and she’s no longer helpless like the rest of them. She gets the Minister and the others out the other side of the room even as Tanner, M, and Bond, disappear through Mallory’s door. It’s difficult, but she schools herself and allow only her eyes to dare the Minister’s judgement of MI6 as she loads her into a safe transport.

Mallory sends her home after his wounds have been tended and M’s gone missing with Bond. Her report is filed and there’s nothing left for her to do, not in her current state of suspension. She spends the night not drinking and thinking how often MI6 has become the field of their work in the past month. Silva dies. M dies and Mallory receives the appointment. 

Before shifting to the new building Eve and Q and all the other staff that’s been working around the clock are forced on at least two days of mandatory leave. Eve’s not sure Q takes her, or simply makes the records look like she has. Eve doesn’t bother her, knowing she’s preparing for the move again, and takes her own leave north to her parents’ home where her they feed her, and don’t ask her questions she can’t answer. She looks up Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”.

_Death closes all: but something ere the end,  
Some work of noble note, may yet be done_

Eve declines reinstatement to field work when she returns from leave and James Bond says he feels safer for it. There’s a joke there in his smile, and she understands he feels safer with her watching over MI6 rather than safer she’s not out there with him. He looks a bit like the bulldog in the box, especially with the flag behind him from a couple buildings over. It’s a joke she’ll tell Q the next time they go out together.

She sinks into her job with what she hopes is grace despite the limitations to her gadgets and weaponry. Q is kind enough to get someone in her branch to design a few ceramic knives to make up for the lack of guns thanks to the metal detectors of government buildings Eve is constantly following M in and out of. The kind of desk work required by MI6’s Director’s personal assistant is not the same desk work required of an oral surgeon or a noted professor and Eve is satisfied with herself. 

She is not, however, satisfied with whatever dance 007 is playing at with Q. It’s a bit like watching a cat dip their paw into smooth surface of water just to see the ripples. Idly, Eve wants to be a fly on the wall when they finally sleep together because she isn’t sure how her advances towards Q stand, and is reluctant to reiterate them with James hovering every other month or so. He spends progressively more time in Q branch when he’s in England, going so far as to use temporarily empty stations to type his reports for turn in, but Eve can’t see a change in their behavior towards each other. Not even after they spend the whole of an afternoon watching reality tv instead of attending the most recent MI6 funeral or brooding on the roof. 

Nothing changes between her friends, but M becomes concerned anyway and requests that Eve summon them for discussions about workplace appropriate relationships among such high ranking officials and agents. She absolutely neglects to mention she’s seen more of Q naked than Bond has, but can’t resist needling at each other them when their respective discussions are over. It’s immediately clear that Q has James much more figured out than he does her. 

Eve sits back and thinks about it all. Q seems to think Eve had made a mistake through alcohol their singular night together, or almost together. It’s a strange circle they’re in where Bond understands Eve’s ambitions and desires almost too intimately, but doesn’t understand Q’s at all. Eve can understand Q for the most part, she thinks, but can only guess at and hope she’s reading James right for her own peace of mind. Q has him taken apart as easily as one of her designed weapons. She sits on this knowledge for a while considering whether to push them along or take something for herself, but she deliberates too long. 

“Prepare to send 007 and Q to Russia.” 

Mallory’s orders are exact and uncompromising despite both Eve and Q’s protests. She and Tanner go quietly into alert when Q informs them that the mission is at least partially compromised and they have no way of proving or even tracking whose doing it is. Their return train is blown off it’s tracks somewhere between Krasnoye and Minsk in Belarus and Eve Moneypenny is distinctly grateful to herself for not being halfway across the world in the field.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is confused or interested I did some ridiculous and shallow research through Google and Wikipedia on the history of Moneypenny, the history of women's service in the WRENS and Royal Navy and the ages of the actors from Skyfall, and Craig's age in Casino Royale. This is the timeline I created:
> 
> 1991 - Gulf War Women in Combat  
> 1993 - WRENS absorbed  
> 1995 - Moneypenny joins RN (19 yrs old)  
> 1998 - Quinn Kerrington hacks MI6 (20 yrs old)  
> 2000 - Tech Agent K (22 yrs)  
> 2004 - Eve meets Agent Olsen ( 28 yrs) Olsen becomes 004 (37 yrs)  
> 2005 - K and 004 mission (27, 38 yrs) Eve joins MI6 (29 yrs)  
> 2006 - Casino Royale; Bond becomes 007 (38 years) K surgeries and recovery (28 yrs)  
> 2007 - K is handed off to Q-Boothroyd (29 yrs)  
> 2008 - K meets Eve (30, 32 respectively)  
> 2012 - Skyfall (Bond 44 Q 34 Eve 36)  
> 2013 - Russia (Bond 45 Q 35 Eve 37 Olsen 46)


End file.
